Quark Pulla ‒ Rahkapulla

Random facts about Finnish coffee culture #1: Finns consume the largest amount of coffee per capita, 12 kg a year while the world's average is only 1,3 kg. Other Nordic countries follow close behind.

Vegan Month of Food is upon us again! Renovating our apartment and watching after a soon year old child have kept me too busy to blog this summer, but luckily a post per day for a whole month should make up for it.

This year I decided to take a real challenge and post with the theme "Finnish coffee table". That means I'll be busy baking all sorts of sweet things, or at least fail miserably, since confectionery definitely isn't my strongest kitchen area. I only have a vague list of what I might be posting so far, but at least I'm going to start with some recipes taking advantage of the basic pulla dough. Unlike last year, they are going to be mostly from the classic end of the spectrum and not so much my own or otherwise highly modern ideas. And since few foods are known in one country only, it's often quite hard to say what is truly a Finnish speciality, but I'll draw the line to those which are clearly associated with some other country even though they might be common in Finland as well, for example pavlova (Russia, though it's actually invented in New Zealand) or princess cake (Sweden). Also, I'll leave sweetnesses associated with certain holidays to their respective seasons.

My purpose was to first say a word or two about the coffee table culture in general but then I decided it's more fun to tell about it little by little as random facts included in every post. Right now all you need to know is that we're talking about a more humble weeknight occasion, in contrast to the standing coffee table you see at weddings and funerals. It's a culture already disappearing from cities but alive and well in more rural areas like South Ostrobothnia where I grew up. When people go to visit their friends or relatives in the evening, they dress up a bit tidier than they normally do but not too dressy. The hosting family (or usually, the hostess alone) serves them coffee and little snacks on the table while everyone discusses about the latest gossip. And of course, there is an extensive amount of small but expected rituals that no one even thinks as such until some poor foreigner comes along and starts acting funnily. So I hope this month worth of posts will also act as a guide in case one of you finds themselves in the middle of this weird but hospitable occasion.

I'm only going to post about the sweet stuff here, but in case you'd like to repeat something like this at your own home, remember that generally only one savory item is enough. It might be vatruskas, a pie or just your average open-faced sandwiches. Sandwich cake on the other hand might be a bit too fancy.

- 1 portion of pulla dough
- 5 dl soy yogurt (drained)
- 1 dl sugar
- 1 tl vanilla sugar
- 1 dl bilberries, black currants or raisins for decoration

First prepare the filling. Drain your yogurt in a coffee filter overnight to make it firmer. Then mix with the sugar and vanilla sugar. Refrigerate.

Start the baking process as normally. After you've rolled the dough into buns, take a drinking glass with an even bottom. Flour it and press firmly but gently on the ball. It should squeeze and leave a nest in the middle, but the bottom shouldn't have holes in it. Repeat with all the pullas.

Fill the nests with couple of spoonfuls of the filling. Crown by placing some berries or raisins into the filling part. Bake 10-15 minutes in a 200°C oven, until the quark has curdled. You don't necessaily need to butter them as it's ok if they look a bit fair skinned compared to regular pullas.

Nutritional values / 1 pulla / 208 g:
energy 597 kcal
fat 14 g
protein 16 g
carbohydrates 96 g
fiber 4 g 

Aronia and Rye Foam ‒ Aronia-ruisvaahto

Oh crap,  seems I've caught myself a cold. Not exactly the thing I'd need at the end of pregnancy, which already itself makes me feel tired. I wouldn't want to use medication either unless it's necessary. Just hope this goes away before the actual labour takes place. And I'll try to eat a lot of berries to tank up with vitamin C and antioxidants. You know that annoying word "superfood"? It gets flashed around a lot when talking about aronia.

Flipping throgh a book about regional Finnish dishes I realized you can make vispipuuro or lingonberry foam with rye flour too. Another recipe I found used bilberries which always pair nicely with rye. I thought I'd try aronia instead. Just like rose, it's a very common decoration bush, but the big, yielding berries rarely get used. People don't seem to realize they're edible, though they make excellent juices, wines and jellies. Perhaps because the taste is so much on the sour side they're not really a nice thing to eat straight from the bush.

The consistency isn't quite as fluffy as in the semolina version, but still surprisingly so. If you want to add the effect, you can whip some vanilla foam into the result too. The ingredient proportions in different versions seem to vary quite a lot, so feel free to experiment with them as well.

- 3 dl water
- 3 dl aronia berries
- 1.5 dl rye flour
- 1 dl sugar

Bring the water to a boil. Add the sugar and the berries. Let simmer until the sugar has dissolved. Whisk in the flour as well. Remove from heat and start to beat with an electric mixer. Continue at least 15 minutes for a fluffy structure.

Nutritional values / 670 g:

energy 745 kcal
fat 3 g
protein 13 g
carbohydrates 166 g
fiber 25 g

Rose Raspberry Sorbet with Bilberry Basil Sauce ‒ Ruusu-vadelmajää mustikka-basilikakastikkeella

Besides the Mofo, I though I'd also take part in the food challenge Finnish food bloggers circle around every month since these are both wonderful ways of connecting us food bloggers into a community. This month's theme is the ball shape. Mushroom balls would be my oblivious choice at the moment, but instead I decided to go with something more experimental.

I just gathered a bag of rose hips and since cleaning them out is quite a hard work, I wanted to use them in  something that would really bring out their flavour. Kissel is a classic for a reason, but you can do it with dried rose hips too. Paula of Veikeä Verso just made rose ice cream from the flower petals, and that sounds beautifully aromatic as well, but this time I thought I'd try sorbet for the first time in my life. After all, sorbet is just as great for rolling cute little ice cream balls. And that raspberry still sounded like a nice pair for rose.

I find it a shame how most rose hips just rotten in bushes though they grow everywhere. Still, I felt a bit nervous, picking the hips in the middle of bright daylight. As if I was a kid stealing apples. An old lady came to me and I was sure she was going to scold me off for stealing something from their housing cooperative, but instead she just asked me what I was going to do with them and told how delicious they are.

This doesn't really need a sauce, but once I had my mixing wand in my hand, I thought I'd try the idea of combining bilberries and basil which I nicked from here. They fit together just perfectly, though next time I might omit the sugar.

- 200 g cleaned rose hips
- 200 g raspberries
- 2 dl water
- 1 dl dark sugar (I find this more aromatic)
- 1 tsp agar (not really necessary, just wanted to play it safe)

For the sauce:
- 2 dl bilberries
- 2 tbsp bilberry juice
- 2 tbsp basil leaves
- 1 tbsp sugar (unless the juice is sweetened already)

Bring the water to a boil. Add the agar and once it's dissolved, also the sugar. Mix in the rose hips and raspberries. Blend smooth. In case you want the sorbet really smooth, press the mass through a filter. This is a nice option if you're using rose hips without cleaning their seeds out beforehand, but not necessary otherwise.

Place the bowl in the freezer. Blend smooth again after couple of hours. Repeat every hour until the sorbet feels sturdy enough.

For the sauce, just blend everything together. Adjust the consistency by adding bilberry juice if needed.

Nutritional values / 850 g:
energy 698 kcal
fat 3 g
protein 10 g
carbohydrates 148 g
fiber 24 g

Bilberry Kukko ‒ Rättänä

The best desserts are simple. The sweet bilberry variant of kukko is so common it even has its own name, rättänä. This seems like an appropriate time for it since we are enjoying a good bilberry year. The first ones appeared already in June.

The amounts of this treat vary but the ingredients themselves stay the same in different versions. Some people like to mix little it of barley flour to rye flour to achieve an easier structure to shape, some leave the potato flour out altogether when using fresh berries but add more of it with frozen berries to absorb extra moisture. I picked some occasional bog bilberries and crowberries along with the bilberries.

The crust:
- 200 g margarine
- 4 dl rye flour (unsifted)
- 1 dl sugar (I used brown sugar)
- 1 tsp baking powder

The filling:
- 1 l bilberries (about 500 g)
- 0.5 dl sugar
- 2 tbsp potato flour

Beat together the crust sugar and margarine. Mix the baking powder into the flour and add it as well. Spread 2/3 of the crust paste into a smallish baking tin.

Mix the filling ingredients and pour over the crust. Roll out the remaining crust material to form a cover for the bilberries.

Bake 40 minutes in a 200°C oven 40-60 minutes, depending on the look of the cover. Serve warm with ice cream or vanilla sauce.

Nutritional values / 1229 g:
energy 2895 kcal
fat 149 g
protein 30 g
carbohydrates 353 g
fiber 62 g 

Chocolate Waffles with Talkkuna and Berry Sauce ‒ Suklaavohlut talkkuna-marjakastikkeella

This isn't really a recipe but just a quick post about my evening snack on the other day. Funny how you get this squirrel mode on when it gets all dark and cold (I think -21°C on Monday was the record so far). I'm currently addicted into all things hot and filling, even overly sweet things which I don't care so much during summer.

The waffles in the photo are made with my basic rye waffle recipe, except that this time I added a few spoonfuls of cocoa powder and extra sugar. The real star was the sauce however. It consists of berries, sugar, some runny yogurt and about 1 dl of talkkuna, all blended together. As always, the berries are what ever I happened to grab from the freezer: sea buckthorn berries, lingonberries, bilberries and strawberries.

These paired rather nicely with the Swedish policeman Kurt Wallander (who has by the way taught me such wonderful expressions as "Finnish suicide").

Bilberry Möllö ‒ Mustikkamöllö

There's something extremely Finnish about these simple berry desserts. You can tell your kids to go picking berries and when they came back with a full bucket, reward them with a sweet "recovery snack" made out of the berries. The smashing part which these always involve is especially fun. Naturally, the preferred recipes used to differ quite a lot amongst different Finnish peoples but nowadays with the integrated culture we get to enjoy them all. This one is decisively Karelian. Modern versions often use rye bread pieces and cream but somehow, those seem to miss the whole point.

- 2 dl bilberries
- 0.75 dl rye flour
- 1 tablespoon (preferably dark) sugar

Grab a spoon. Mash it all together. Make it disappear.

Nutritional values / 188 g:
energy 260 kcal
fat 2 g
protein 6 g
carbohydrates 55 g
fiber 12 g

Fermented Rowan Tee ‒ Hiostettu pihlajatee

The easiest way to get herb teas is just drying up the leaves and flowers you plan to use. This summer I thought I'd learn a new method of finding some new tastes from familiar plants by fermenting. This is how green tea turns into black tea.

The leaves in the photo are from a rowan tree. I also mixed some bilberry and fireweed (which is by the way an excellent basis for any tee mixture) leaves with it. Other plants more than appropriate here include for example raspberry, black currant and birch.

When the leaves you plan to use are still fresh, crush them (between your hands or using a rolling pin for example) so they juice up evenly. Lay them fluffily in a large glass jar and cover. The process needs some oxygen so see the lid isn't too tight.

Place the jar in a hot place (40-50°C) for as long as the leaves have turned brown. You can for example cover the jar with a black t-shirt and leave it on a window sill on a hot summer day or put it in a polystyrene box with hot water bottles. Depending on the plant this may take only an hour (as in the case of rowan) or several days. Last, make sure the leaves have dried up as well so they won't mildew. (I spread them on a newspaper for a night.)

The aroma lasts longer if you store the leaves intact and crush them only a moment before usage.

Oven Omelet with Bilberry Leaves ‒ Mustikanlehtiomeletti uunissa

It's summer time and cooking isn't exactly among my first priorities at the moment. Mostly I've been eating salads with the method "shred and mix everything you happen to find from the fridge" which rarely results in a disappointment. So compared to that this counts as a complicated dinner. The idea of using bilberry leaves (instead of berries) here came from a mention in Sillä sipuli and the basic omelet recipe I snigged from Kasvisruokaa. The amount seemed a bit small for two bottomless stomachs so we also had a sidekick - salad of course. Please notice that like so many other summer treats bilberry leaves contain oxalic acid which is why you shouldn't eat them on a regular basis.

- 3 dl water
- 2.5 dl (chick)pea flour
- salt
- black pepper
- 1 dl fresh bilberry leaves (or a herb of your liking during wintertime)
- oil for buttering

Whip the flour and the water into and even batter. Add the spices and the bilbeery leaves. Let the batter rest for about half an hour.

Pour the batter onto an oiled casserole and cook in a 250°C oven until the omelet has acquired some colour (about 15 minutes). Let it chill down and cut in triangles. Lightly roasted cherry tomatoes accompany them perfectly.

Nutritional values / 461 g:
energy 672 kcal
fat 23 g
protein 32 g
carbohydrates 83 g
fiber 15 g

Rose Kissel ‒ Ruusukiisseli

Somehow I had associated this dessert with English kitchen - perhaps because of all those puddings and fruit soups. But when I recently tried to google a recipe I couldn't find much of anything in English. What I did find was a Wikipedia article explaining kiisseli (from a Slavic word meaning sour) is popular only in Eastern and Northern Europe. I can certainly verify that claim for Finland. They're among the basic groceries and young people even like to make drinks out of the thinner soup-like varieties.

Though I still find myself a bit unconvinced that a dessert this simple could not be known in the English-speaking world, I thought I'd write down one version. Bilberries, strawberries and black currants are perhaps among the most classical flavours but I decided to use rose this time. There are two layers to complement each other but you could make just either one. Kiisseli is often prepared from plain juice but I wanted to get some odds and bits to chew. I also tried throwing some potato pearls into the white layer but that only made the mouth-feel resemble a barley porridge so I left that out from the final recipe. The thickening agent is nearly always potato starch but you might use for example ground flax seeds instead.

The milk layer:
- 3 dl soy milk (or other fatty milk)
- 3 tablespoon sugar
- 2 tablespoons potato flour (+ 0.5 dl water)
- rose water
- almond extract (just a drop)

The rose layer:
- 4 tablespoons dried rose hip pieces
- 4 dl water
- 1 tablespoon blackcurrant juice (non-sweetened, non-watered)
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 2 tablespoons potato flour (+ 0.5 dl water)

Dissolve the sugar into milk on a hot stove and season with rose water and/or almond extract. Let the milk come into a boil. Dissolve the potato flour into a dollop of cold water and pour it gradually into the pot, whisking all the time (to avoid clumps). Let the mixture come into a boil again and remove it from the stove. Stir well and pour your serving cups half full.

Wash the pot and fill again with rose hips and water. Let them simmer for a while to soften the hips and get the flavours out. (Taste to decide.) Season with sugar and black currant juice. Now repeat the potato flour adding as before. Remove the pot from the stove, stir well and pour on the milk kiisseli.

Serve either hot or cold. If you refrigerate these the structure will evolve from gluey to jelly.

Nutritional values / 957 g:
energy 517 kcal
fat 6 g
protein 14 g
carbohydrates 101 g
fiber 4 g

Bilberry Cheese Cake ‒ Mustikkajuustokakkku

There probably isn't a single vegan food blog without a cheese cake recipe but here's one more version anyway. The beauty of cheese cake is that it's easy to variate, very hard to fail and doesn't mind to spend a couple of days in the refrigerator.

Most Finnish home bakers seem to use fresh cheese like Tofutti but I replaced that with a double portion of yogurt so mine is technically more like a yogurt cake. Fresh cheese makes the structure firmer but that's all the same if you're going to bake the cake. And even if you're not, this will stick together, it's just not as strudy. Another way of making it fattier is to use nut yogurt. In case you'd like to add a larger amount of some liquid flavouring you may want to replace the potato flour with agar. I've seen many versions where people have decorated the cake with a shiny jelly made of agar and juice but I just spilled a bag of berries straight from the freezer on it and they acted just as I had hoped: got stuck and melted their juices to form a beautiful marble pattern. The cake tin I used was ⌀ 25 cm.

- 1 l soy yogurt
- 2.5 dl vanilla sauce (for example Oatley)
- 1 dl icing sugar (or halva)
- 0.5 dl potato flour
- 1 small punch of lemon balm + some water

- 200 g frozen bilberries
- 50 g margarine
- 200 g crumbling biscuits (I used some salmiakki biscuits a friend of mine had left behind but oat biscuits or rye-based digestives fit here as well)

Drain extra water out of the yogurt. I for example placed it inside old stockings and hanged above the sink overnight.

Crush the biscuits and pick the margarine with them. Press evenly into the baking tin. Let the lemon balm simmer for a moment in a small amount of boiling water and then blend the result smooth. Mix the drained yogurt, the vanilla sauce, the sugar, the flour and the lemon balm juice. Spread the mixture evenly on the cake bottom. Bake 45 minutes in a 160°C oven.

Let the cake cool down and then spread the frozen bilberries on it. Serve cold after the berries have melted.

Nutritional values / 1815 g:
energy 4490 kcal
fat 125 g
protein 64 g
carbohydrates 288 g
fiber 23 g

Bilberry Milk ‒ Mustikkamaito

Hello again! It's been a while since I've last cooked anything. This is a truly amazing time for that. Forests are full of berries and mushrooms only waiting for someone to pick them. Domestic vegetables are at their best and cheapest. Also, the weather is slowly starting to get chillier so I can concentrate on gaining more body fat under my thickest sweater to hibernate through winter.

While the bilberry season is still on however, I thought I'd restart blogging with a very simple yet very tasty drink. This is something that kids love since they can do it themselves all the way from picking the berries into a jug.

- 1 glass of bilberries (strawberries are another classic)
- about 1/2 glass of soy milk
- sugar to taste

Squash the bilberries into their glass. Sprinkle some sugar on them and then fill the glass with milk. Stir just a little so that the milk turns blue.

Nutritional values / 3 dl glass:
energy 99 kcal
fat 2 g
protein 4 g
carbohydrates 15 g
fiber 5 g

Mämmi Drink ‒ Mämmijuoma

I hope you understood to hoard lots of mämmi when it was at its cheapest right after Easter cause I'm planning to post my experiments on ways to use it. If you didn't, here's a recipe.

This is a slightly tuned version of Mämmijuoma in a cook book called Härkäpapua Sarvista (Irina Somersalo & al., Multikustannus 2007). This is anything but light but it does work as a great recovery drink after sports because of the high amoount of carbohydrates.

- 2 dl mämmi
- 5 dl cold oat milk
- 2 dl frozen bilberries (or fresh bilberries plus additional ice crush)
- 2 tbsp Vana Tallinn (An Estonian liqueur with a distinctive taste. If you can't find any, try cloudberry liqueur or coffee liqueur instead.)

Blend everything smooth. Decorate with bilberries. Enjoy with sunshine.

Nutritional values / 1 serving: (Without the Vana Tallinn)
energy 531 kcal
fat 7 g
protein 11 g
carbohydrates 104 g
fiber 20 g

Good Morning Smoothie ‒ Hyvän aamun pirtelö

I'm not really sure if it's right to call this a recipe cause it's so simple anyone can make it up. Still, I thought I'd share with you one of my favourite treats from my teens.

I call it good morning smoothie since if I was the morning person I dream to be this would be my ideal breakfast after jogging. Actually I'm not so I rather enjoy this in the evening under a blanket with the company of a good book.

Must have:
- 200 g frozen berries (in my case typically a mix of black currant, strawberries and raspberries but bilberries are great too)
- 1 blender

Optional additions:
- 200 g silken tofu (If you use tofu but not milk this actually becomes more of a silken sorbet.)
- 1 dl soy yogurt or oat milk
- 2 tbsp hemp seeds or almonds
- 0.5 dl soy flour
- 0.5 oat meals
- 1 fruit, for example a banana or a kiwi
- 1 tsp vanilla sugar

If you're using hemp seeds or almonds blend them first with a small amount of water. Then pour everything else in too and blend until mostly smooth. Enjoy right away.

Rutabaga Kukko ‒ Lanttukukko

Kukkos are a Savoyard and Karelian speciality available with any imaginable filling. The most famous ones I believe are kalakukko (filled with fish), lanttukukko (rutabaga) and mustikkakukko or rättänä (bilberries). If you look the dictionary, you'll find that kukko means cock in the official language. This however isn't official language. The name of the dish refers most likely to kukkaro (wallet), cause the rye cover hides (kätkeä) something.

For my very first lanttukukko I looked help mostly from a kalakukko recipe and another lanttukukko recipe that has a lot of helpful photos about the different stages.

The cover:
- 5 dl water
- 1/2 tbsp salt
- 100 g margarine
- 9 dl rye flour
- 3 dl white flour, for example wheat or spelt

The filling:
- 1 kg rutabaga (actually I used turnip which I find tastier)
- salt
- sugar
- tar liqueur (I'm quite certain beer would work as well)
- margarine
- barley grains (about 2 dl)

Peel and slice the rutabagas. Put the slices into a pot and shake with sugar and salt so the slices start to “sweat”. Mix the cover ingredients and spread it on the table to a circle so that it's diameter is about one metre. The edges should be about one centimetre thick, the centre may be thicker. Spread a thin layer of barley grains in the centre and on it a layer of rutabaga. Also sprinkle salt, tar liqueur, barley grains and margarine on them. Then add the next rutabaga layer and keep going until you've finished all your slices. Top with salt, tar liqueur and margarine. Now you can seal the kukko. Even the cover with wet hands so there are no holes or lumps.

Put it in the 250°C oven for half an hour so the cover hardens up and gets some colour. Lower the heat to 125°C. Wrap the kukko in moist parchment paper and after that into folio. Cook four hours more. When you take the kukko out cover it with towels so the cover won't get hard.

There are different schools in how to eat this thing. Some say you should cut the top open and start eating from the insides. I like to slice it like bread. Either way you'll notice it's a very versatile dish.

Nutritional values / 2700 g
energy 3076 kcal
fat 98 g
protein 116 g
carbohydrates 669 g
fiber 141 g

Bilberry Pie ‒ Juolukkapiirakka

While the oven was hot anyway, I thought I'd make the dessert as well. So I just improvised a quick sweet pie as well. Used mostly frozen bog bilberries cause I happened to have them left in the freezer (gods only know from which year) but any forest berries will do.

The paste:
- 1 dl rape oil
- 3 dl graham flour
- 1/2 dl sugar
- a dollop of water
- 1 tsp baking powder

The topping:
- 4 dl bog bilberries
- 2 dl whippable oat cream
- 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar (unless the cream itself is already flavoured)

Heat the oven to 200°C. Mix the paste ingredients together and spread it on a cake tin. Top with bilberries and put it in the oven for 20 minutes. In the meantime whip the cream and flavour with vanilla sugar. Spread the whipped cream on the pie and let it bake another 5‒10 minutes.

My first version of this pie didn't come out exactly as planned. Actually it was quite boggy. So couple of good tips: if you use frozen berries, let them melt a little so you can pour out the extra water. And make sure you've whipped the cream long enough. (Not sure if mine was even meant to foam in the first place.)

It's also possible to leave the cream all out or add it only just before serving on the chilled down pie. Next time I thought I'd try this with ice cream instead of ‒ well, warm cream.

Nutritional values / 900 g
energy 2232 kcal
fat 124 g
protein 31 g
carbohydrates 250 g
fiber 33 g